In today’s collect, we pray to God, “that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal….”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Preparing for Judgement”

The end things, or Eschaton in Greek, can be categorized in two parts, the individual and the general.

The individual part of the End of Days is the story of our own soul: Death, our individual judgement, and then either Heaven or Hell. These are the Four Last Things. It is the story of our souls at our individual end according to Scripture, especially in the Gospels.

The general part of the End of Days is the story of the entire cosmos, or Creation: The approach of the End, the resurrection of the body, the general judgment, and the final consummation of all things, new Heaven and new Earth. This story is told throughout Scripture but especially in the Revelation of St. John.

So, when we speak of Christ’s judgement of our souls in the end, we mean two things, His judgement of each of us upon our deaths and His judgment of all of us at His Second Coming.

Think of that for a moment. As if death is not scary and awful enough, we will undergo judgement before the throne of Christ immediately following our death. We will draw our last breath, our soul will be ripped apart from our body, and then Christ will judge our earthly life. Christ will justly judge each immediately separated soul and determine its eternal home.

This is eminently logical, but nevertheless quite dreadful. For no matter how loving and holy a person we are, and so very few of us can say that, not a single one of us is as loving and holy so to not have horrible sins for which Christ will damn us.

We do not like to admit it, and perhaps some of us never admit it, but we do not live our lives as if we are in the presence of Christ. Maybe we think that God has more important things to do than concern himself with our little lives. Maybe we act like functional atheists, living our daily lives like God did not exist, not praying to him, not thanking him for our blessings, and doing what we will as if we were not going to be judged. Maybe we don’t really understand what we mean by “God” – not thinking of him personally so that we could love him, maybe thinking of God as some kind of divine principle or force.

Did you notice what I left out? I left out living in our sin because we don’t care what will happen to us in the future so long as we get our pleasure now; living like we are junkies only concerned about getting our next fix, not giving a thought for the consequences of doing so.

Sin is enticing. If sin were not so tasty, hardly anybody would sin. Adam and Eve were set not only for life but for eternity in the Garden, but sin was so tasty to them that they risked it all and suffered death and misery just for a taste.

Sin makes us stupid. We love our sin. We love our greediness. We love our booze and pills. We love our prideful disdain of others. We love talking behind each other’s backs. We love sin. So we focus on our beloved sin instead of Christ and His judgement.

Some object to being judged upon our deaths on theological grounds. Some Protestants hold that the dead fall asleep and wake up at the Second Coming of Christ to be judged in the general judgement then. But when we read the Holy Scriptures, we see that this is not the case.

In St. Luke xxiii.43, Christ says to the penitent thief, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” The penitent thief was about to die, to suffer the separation of his soul from his body which is the curse of our sinful ancestors and his own vile sin. And after that death, according to our Lord’s own words, that that soul was to be with God in paradise.

Also in 2 Corinthians v.8, we see St. Paul speak of the faithful Christian, “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” The godly Christian, when he is then absent from his body, is present with Christ. In other words, the faithful and just Christian is present with the people of God here on earth and with God himself in Heaven. You go from the one state to the other.

We also see in the parable of Lazarus and Dives that each has undergone judgement upon their deaths. While this is a parable, its setting keeps with Christ’s words to the penitent thief and St. Paul’s words of encouragement to the faithful. We die, and then we are judged by God.

How will we be judged? We will be judged by faith and by our actions. Indeed, perhaps the particular judgement may not be Christ sitting on His throne waiting for our death and then sitting as the judge of our souls. Instead, the moment of our death may be the end of our chance to alter our eternal destination. For we will have then had the chance to call upon Christ as our Savior, the chance to respond to God’s election of us in Holy Baptism, and the chance to live holy, loving, and morally upright lives here on earth. Thus, judgement is also a reckoning. It is the working out of God’s eternal self and law upon us, his creation.

Our closing hymn today sums up our end with Christ’s end; that is, it matches our holy response to Christ’s work among us with Christ’s Second Coming. Instead of death, sin, and Hell, instead we sing:

Yea, Amen! Let all adore thee,

High on thine eternal throne;

Saviour, take the power and glory;

Claim the kingdom for thine own;

Judgement is that mechanism, that decision-making process that aligns our end with the end of the Cosmos. Our glory in Christ, which is our salvation from sin and entrance into everlasting life with God Almighty, our glory in Christ is but a part of Christ’s glory in epic cosmic victory, banishing forever the powers of wickedness and sin and triumphing eternally in loving-kindness, mercy, and peace with the Triune God, the glorious angels of Heaven, and all the faithful saints.

But Judgment recognizes that all this glory is not a given; it is worked for. God the Son worked for this glory by suffering the indignity of becoming a mere man as a babe in a manger in Bethlehem, by living the life of a mortal man, of suffering His Passion, of experiencing excruciating death, rising again, defeating death forever, and Ascending into Heaven. You and I work for it by believing in Christ, joining with Him in His Body the Church so that He can save us, and conforming our sinful lives to His holy life.

Both experience and Scripture show us that we have a choice. Many exterior forces work upon us, such as where we are born, the caliber of our family, the opportunities to hear the Gospel and so on. Many interior forces work upon us, such as our mental health, the pain which afflicts us, our past sins, and so on. Even with these exterior and interior forces working upon us, we still have the choice – even if it is a small one – to follow Christ and obey Him or not to follow Christ and disobey Him. And what matters is not what we claim to do, but what we actually do, and Christ is the judge of that.

Judgement is Christ stopping the clock at our death and seeing what we have done with our lives. He is with us every minute of every hour of every day of our life. He is not ignorant of us when He judges us; He knows us intimately and loves us dearly. But upon our death, when our soul rips away from our body, our time on Earth is done. The moment of truth has arrived. It is the same thing when Christ returns in power and great glory – our moment of truth has arrived.

What have we done with what He has given us? That is the ultimate point of judgement.

And in the end, the discerner of hearts and lover of souls will decide if we would rather live without Him and thus go to Hell with the wicked angels and men, where God’s presence is withdrawn, or if we would rather live with Him and thus go to Heaven with the holy angels and men, to live in the presence of God for all eternity.

Sometimes we hear of meeting somebody half-way. Christ has met us all the way. He left His Heavenly home and come all the way down to earth to become one of us as a little baby that Christmas morning in Bethlehem. Christ is the only way to God, for He is both man, like us, and God. Our salvation absolutely and completely relies upon Him. All our efforts are to become like Him, to help and not hinder Christ’s transformation of us into His divine image. For Heaven is the home of the divine, and we must be perfectly holy to life with Him there.

At the Resurrection of the Dead, we will receive our new heavenly bodies. But what about our souls? We can do nothing about our future bodies now, but each one of us can make the most life-altering decisions about our souls today.

To be awarded Heaven when Christ judges our souls, we must be like Christ: Pure of heart and innocent in deeds. We must work with the Holy Ghost in transforming ourselves to Christ’s image by doing works of righteousness and confessing our sins when we fall.

In today’s collect, we pray to God, “that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal….”

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.